


Leave of Absence

by JadeClover



Series: star-hewn colossi [14]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, pure silliness, the slipperies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 09:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11688489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeClover/pseuds/JadeClover
Summary: When Haggar takes an uncharacteristic leave of absence, Zarkon becomes concerned and suspicious enough to investigate it.





	Leave of Absence

**Author's Note:**

> Why did I even write this? I don't know, let's just say the anticipation for season 3 was getting to me. I've had part of this sitting around for months, but I only now rewrote the entire thing and polished it up a bit. This is probably terrible but I can't actually bring myself to care about that right now ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**TO:** Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe  
**FROM:** High Priestess Haggar

 

> _I will be unavailable for the quintant and can be expected to remain unavailable for up to three. After that point, my normal operations will resume._

  
His eyes narrow, something close to a growl rattling in his throat. As the next commander is sent in, he closes quickly out of the message and composes himself just enough to listen... or to attempt to. This morning, he is meant to be hearing a series of reports—ones of above-average importance, even—but stars take him if he cannot _pay attention_.  
  
The entire time this latest commander, dropped respectfully to one knee, is reciting his successes, all Zarkon can focus on is the empty space at his side.  
  
_She should be here. Why is she not here?_  
  
His jaw clenches.  
  
"You are _dismissed,_ Commander," he growls, and the Galra before him sees fit to take his leave. Once alone again, Zarkon's eyes fall closed, his claws tensing against the arms of his throne as though he must physically restrain himself from pulling up her communication _yet again_.  
  
This simmering frustration—( _and worry, at the heart of it_ )—is uncharacteristic, unbefitting an emperor, and so he forces it down, pulls it back under the sheer force of his will. He breathes deeply until he is assured there is no trace of a growl to be heard, and only then does he allow himself to pull up the message. He reads it over once more—( _as though he does not have it memorized by now_ )—and turns his mind to what he must _do_.  
  
He can imagine the precise look Haggar would give him if she knew of this worry. Never would he insult her capacity to look after herself, and for all he enjoys the luxury of being Emperor, he holds no illusion that he can actually _require_ her to attend him in his throne room or make herself available if she wishes not to be.  
  
But that is not what troubles him. The heart of the matter, the unease ticking at the back of his mind, is that though she does not have to, she always _does_. For the greater part of seven thousand years, she has kept to an easy predictability. She is a creature of habit, and that suits them both.  
  
On many occasions, her work occupies her beyond the hours anticipated, and he has never been so unreasonable as to be alarmed by that. This time, though, her work is not the trouble. If it was, she would have _told him_. Of that, he is certain.  
  
Once, some millennia ago, all he received from her was a polite _"I will not be available"_ and then... nothing. ( _The memory haunts him while he is meant to be hearing the reports of his commanders._ ) It was a morning almost exactly like this, and only several vargas later did one of her druids think to inform him that she had nearly _died_.  
  
( _Apparently the druids were under the impression that she had already told him of the incident. He does not know what standards they measure by—_ (they take after her too much in this) _—but her sending a brief message from the operating table,_ whilst currently undergoing surgery to remove shrapnel _, does not and never will count as an adequate means of informing him._ )  
  
( _When he found her later, after she had slept off the strain and the blood loss_ (and not the anesthesia, because she had refused that), _she simply asserted that she had not wished to worry him. He was able to inform her, in very justified consternation, that she had failed in that attempt._ )  
  
So—forgive him his wariness, but he would like very much to know she is well.  
  
Swiftly, he keys open a reply to her message, pausing only a moment over the words before matching them to the spareness of her tone.  
  
**TO:** Haggar  
**FROM:** Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe

 

> _For what reasons are you unavailable?_

  
Perhaps she will see fit to offer a reply. ( _If she is even conscious—but that is a matter he would rather not contemplate._ )

 

* * *

  
  
She does not.  
  
An entire varga passes, and she does not reply.  
  
Frustrated, he resorts to one of the tricks he learned from her, knowing full well she could have circumvented it if she chose to, but she had not. The server data shows the message was received and accessed only ten doboshes after he sent it.  
  
...She is ignoring him.  
  
Or she is unwell.  
  
Whichever it is, he makes his decision. The resolution sees him through the last three reports until he can act on it, when he finds the time to step away by taking it from the hour meant for his meal. No doubt Haggar will frown over him for skipping it ( _as with his quintessence-fueled metabolism, he cannot truly afford to_ ), but he will simply have to offer her the opportunity to chide him in person.  
  
With his determination a balm over every question beginning _"What if,"_ he strides from the throne room.

 

* * *

  
  
Haggar's quarters can be defined by what they are not.  
  
For one, they are not _his_ quarters, for all that she regularly invites herself into his. She prefers to keep a separate space for herself, one that is all her own.  
  
Secondly, her quarters are not the High Priestess' Quarters. He is uncertain why that empty suite continues to persist after countless renovations and one outright rebuilding of his ship, but while it is nominally hers, it has never been inhabited by her and likely never will be. She does not like others knowing where she can be found. Even if the room itself is clandestine, the nameplate on the door proves too much for her comfort.  
  
Instead, third, her actual rooms are not on any map, not even the ones to which she and Zarkon alone have access. Its absence, however, is visible if one knows where to look. In the thousands of narrow maintenance tunnels, into which few but the repair drones ever venture, there is one place where several of the adjacent access rooms and storage chambers are missing in a pattern inconsistent with the rest. A quirk of ship design? Perhaps...  
  
( _He knows that her quarters may not be where he will find her now, but it is a safe enough option that he will try there first._ )  
  
He could access the maintenance tunnel from a hidden panel within the druids' labs, but in the centuries since last he had to, he has forgotten the method required to open it. He is in no mood to ask one of her masked wraiths for help, so instead he relegates himself to the longer route.  
  
That much, at least, he remembers—the exact entrance to the tunnel network that is closest to her quarters.  
  
It is far outside the regions of his ship he usually travels, though still within a distance to walk. These halls, while nominally central, are more commonly used by the lesser soldiers who have no reason to access the command center or any of its associated facilities, and thus rarely find themselves crossing the Emperor's path.  
  
He has not been stared at this much in centuries. The nervous attention is grating, but he cannot bring himself to do more than sweep past his startled underlings—( _they get out of the way, at least_ )—and focus on his goal. ( _They are_ nothing _to him, and they do not matter._ )  
  
Their terror would almost be amusing if it was not also an indicator of gross incompetency. If their own emperor frightens them into a stupor, how will they react when faced with an enemy?  
  
There are one soldier's eyes on him when he at last locates the tunnel entrance. He turns enough for an instant of brief, narrowed eye contact, then palms open the door and ducks inside.  
  
Let his soldiers wonder about him wandering into maintenance passages. That would likely produce gossip more preferable than the usual. (. _..Or perhaps not. He has learned not to underestimate the creative minds of idle soldiers._ )  
  
The passage is almost too small for him to stand upright, narrow enough that he angles his shoulders on instinct, but after a dozen paces, the dim, tight corridor opens into a proper access tunnel, lit evenly with guide-lights and spacious enough for him to walk freely. On occasion, he must dodge an abandoned cart of tools or empty crates, but that is all that obstructs him. He comes here so rarely—is this sort of disorganization common here?  
  
( _Haggar is living in squalor, but she would not have it any other way._ )  
  
He remembers the door well enough; it is identical to all the others, except that its hand scanner is slightly lower. He almost has to bend to reach it.  
  
At his touch, the door hesitates briefly before sliding open. ( _It is his ship. Every door opens for him, should he wish it, even if Haggar's personal scanner has become slightly_ temperamental _over the centuries..._ )  
  
His eyes are drawn instantly to movement inside—Haggar, shifting on her bed. She is seated with her back to the door, cloaked in no less than four sheets in a bizarre imitation of her robes. All that is visible from this angle is a sliver of her face.  
  
"No," she says outright.  
  
_Oh,_ he thinks, because this explains the matter _perfectly_.  
  
The sheets cling to her in places as though damp, and between that, the odd smell, and the utter misery she exudes, he recalls a certain _bizarre_ and _disturbing_ Altean ailment he had since had the luxury to forget. _The slipperings,_ was it...?  
  
( _Truly, he wishes he had not been forced to remember it._ )  
  
Out of courtesy, he steps inside and allows the door to close behind him.  
  
For nearly longer than he can bear, he simply stands in silence beyond the threshold—( _though, as per usual, he is distracted by how_ small _everything is in her rooms_ )—and for her part she almost refuses to acknowledge him. This, at least, provides a clear explanation as to why she excused herself from her duties—in no realm of possibility would she ever allow herself to be seen like this. It also makes clear why she did not respond to his query—in all her pride, she would have been loathe to admit it.  
  
"I had thought," she says at last, her voice low and raw in the way it gets only when she is worn too close to her limits, "that I had identified the exact cause of this affliction and _erased it from existence._ "  
  
"It would appear you have not." Obvious, yes, and puerile to say so, but he can think of nothing else. The Emperor of the Galra, by necessity, is known for a certain degree of eloquence... but how does one respond to _this_?  
  
A low, edged sound comes from within the sheets, something very close to a growl. It sounds almost Galran, in a way. She should not be capable of producing such a sound.  
  
Perhaps he should have taken more care in his answer.  
  
But then all the tension floods from her shoulders, a bitter slump as if in defeat. A long, weighted pause, and then he bears witness to a rare thing, for her—an entirely unclothed wrist and arm, snaking out from within the sheets. ( _As fond as she is of her robes, it has been quite a while since he has seen that much of her skin. The familiar red marks down her arm draw his eye as always._ )  
  
Her hand reaches for a holopad. The first three attempts, her grip slides off as though she had not even tried. On the fourth, she manages to tug it into her rather damp cloak of sheets. She bends over it, a violet glow suffusing her silhouette as the device powers on.  
  
"Perhaps this time I will be successful," she says with the same grim fervor of a soldier who recites, _"Victory or death."_  
  
A fitting time to return to his own work, then. His curiosities have been sated, his worries never given form. The reality of leaving her to the obvious misery of her condition is not a pleasing one, but he can do nothing else. She likely will not tolerate his presence much longer in any case. ( _And—he will admit this—her_ slipperiness _is very unnerving._ )  
  
"I will leave you to your work," he says. A distracted, "Yes, sire," follows him from the room.  
  
On his way back to the throne room—( _though he really ought to locate food, even just a nutrition slab_ )—he passes yet another terrified soldier in the halls, and now, with his lack of distraction, that part of his patience finally wears thin.  
  
He slows to a halt and asks, with the barest glance over his shoulder at the frozen, terrified Galra, "Have you seen something interesting?"  
  
The soldier leaps to attention. "No, sir! Er, my lord! Vrepit sa!"  
  
Zarkon continues without a word. Either this fool and his ilk will learn to overcome their ineptitude, or they will likely succumb to heart failure in the near future. Either option is acceptable at this point.  
  
( _Would Haggar find this amusing? She likely would—or else be just as disgusted as he is._ )  
  
( _Perhaps he will visit and tell her, if she reins in her pride enough to allow it. If he plies her with food from the kitchens, she may tolerate his presence long enough for him to say it._ )  
  
( _He spends the rest of the day hearing another endless series of reports, but somehow, with that thought in mind, he finds it remarkably easier to pay attention._ )


End file.
